Outdoor cooking is a very popular style of dining. Such cooking is very common at a variety of outdoor events such as faith-based events, picnics, fund raisers, weddings, family reunions, community festivals, and backyard barbeques that bring people together. At such events, there are a very large variety of foods that are prepared. Often, each of those foods is required to be cooked separately and at different temperatures.
Additionally, when such cooking events take place, the people that are assigned the task of cooking at these events are usually required to transport all the equipment to the area where the event will be held. That equipment usually includes multiple and/or different cooking devices. The transportation of that equipment to the location of is normally accomplished by obtaining a trailer and then having the cooking personnel physically load all the things needed for the event. Those same personnel are then required to transport that cooking equipment to the event, and then unload and assemble those cooking devices at the event location. Because space at the event location can be limited or awkward, the final arrangement of the cooking devices can be inefficient and sometimes even very unsafe. When the event is over, those same cooking personnel must disassemble the cooking devices, reload those cooking devices onto the transportation vehicle, and unload that equipment at the final location where the cooking equipment is stored until needed again at another event. Most outdoor cooking systems having more than a single cooking device are normally assembled and set up in a manner that often makes cooking at the event very inefficient, and sometimes dangerous, as the cook moves between each of the cooking devices.
To remove many of these issues, it would be desirable to incorporate a common residential cooking rule know as the Kitchen Triangle into the design and arrangement of those cooking devices on the transportation unit. The dominant geometric shapes in most kitchens and outdoor cooking systems are either squares or rectangles. But a triangular shape has always been an important element of a kitchen's design and functionality. The so-called “work triangle” is defined by the National Kitchen and Bath Association (the NKBA) as an imaginary straight line drawn from the center of the sink, to the center of the cooking device area, to the center of the refrigerator, and finally back to the sink. Such an arrangement provides not only more efficient use of the cook's energy, but this triangular design also prevents major traffic patterns from crossing through the triangle. Therefore, one major goal of the Kitchen Triangle is to keep all the major work stations near the cook without placing them so closely together that the kitchen becomes cramped. An additional goal is to minimize traffic within the kitchen area so that the cook doesn't have to struggle with interruptions and interferences.
As a result of these several issues noted above, it can be very difficult to complete the process of transporting, setting up, and using cooking devices that are capable of providing efficient, compact, and safe cooking of multiple foods at the same location by using only outdoor cooking apparatus currently found in the art. It would be desirable to have an apparatus that can be transported to a location and then set up quickly into an adjustable outdoor cooking system that would provide safe operation of multiple cooking devices arranged in an efficient manner that would include the potential for arranging the outdoor cooking system in an arrangement as closely as possible to the Kitchen Triangle.